Legend of the Lost Hero: The Lightning Thief
by TheRealEvanSG
Summary: Helen Deguchi is most certainly NOT your average girl. She's a Greek demigod with Japanese heritage, and as if THAT wasn't enough, she was one of the few children of Hades. Then she was petrified, thanks to Medusa, and frozen in time for 70 years! Now Helen may play a dangerous part in the Great Prophecy. She also just might fall in love with everyone's favorite son of Poseidon...


Key:

**bold underlined:**chapter titles

_italics (all): _flashback, dream, or past

_italics (few words): _emphasis or thoughts

* * *

**Prologue: The Legend Begins**

_The year was 1939, and the Second World War was all the rage on the streets of New York City. Everywhere, people were talking about their sons and daughters who had gone off to the battlefield. Mothers and fathers worried over their childrens' safety. It was a dark time, as war always was, and that Christmas, people didn't have much to celebrate._

_In the background, unbeknownst to the silly mortals, a certain demigod camp was also readying themselves for the second round of their war. Campers in the orange Camp Half-Blood t-shirt were scurrying around, delivering weapons and other supplies to their friends, or fetching ambrosia and nectar for the infirmary. Chiron, the camp director, was pacing anxiously. He hoped that this in-fighting between the children of Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades wouldn't lead to the discovery of the Roman camp. The last encounter had been devastating... And not to mention that... _issue_ that had come up. Anymore surprises and he'd be worrying about his sanity. Chiron stopped pacing and went outside. He had to adress the problem at hand right now._

_And in the middle of all the tension and chaos, a single girl sat on the beach, looking out at the sea with a scowl on her otherwise pretty face, her chocolate brown hair blowing back in the sea breeze coming off Long Island Sound._

Gods, I hate Ares_, she thought grimly. No doubt he'd been the one to stir up all this trouble._

_"Helen?" said the familiar voice of Chiron._

_Helen blinked, forgetting about her anger for a moment. "Eh? Chiron-san? What do you want?"_

_It came out a bit ruder than she meant it to, and she winced._

_"Your father issued you a quest this morning," he said gravely. "It is very dangerous, and despite who your godly parent is... well, I'm worried."_

_The thirteen-year-old sighed inwardly. Everyone, even kind old Chiron, was nervous around her. After all, she, Helen Deguchi, was not normal. Not even by demigod standards. This was partly due to her Japanese heritage, which had been from her mother's side, but the real offense was her father, a certain god of the dead who not only creeped everyone out and was thought to be the most evil of the gods, but was currently at war with Zeus and Poseidon. Hades._

_"Why would Dad issue me a quest?" She spat out _dad_ as if it were an evil word._

_"Because, unfortunately, with the rest of the children of the Big Three all fighting at the moment, you're one of the only demigods here strong enough to complete it. And even that will take some luck."_

_Helen sighed. She didn't like where this was going. "What is it?"_

_"It seems that the gorgon Medusa has finally reformed after thousands of years, and has made a home base in New Jersey." Chiron said distastefully, as though New Jersey wasn't a good place to make a home base. "Her lair is called Auntie Em's Garden Gnome Emporium. Hades has decreed that you should go with two friends to slay her. She has been turning demigods, woodland spirits, and mortals alike into stone. This must be stopped, and even Hades has a soft spot for innocent people dying a death that terrible."_

_The young demigod sighed again, stood up, and brushed sand off her ripped-up jeans. "Alright then, I guess. If dear old Dad said I have to do it, guess I have no choice in the matter."_

_The horse dude looked at her sympathetically. "Don't blame your father for your childhood, Helen," he said carefully, not wanting to anger her. "If he could, I'm sure he would've intervened. Made it better. But Zeus made a law that the gods should not get involved with mortal affairs."_

_"Yeah, yeah, I know. So who else is going on the quest?"_

_"That's up to you, child."_

_"Dean and Lily, then," Helen said, smiling for the first time that day as she thought about her two best friends. Dean was a son of Ares, but a nice boy nonetheless. He was caring and sympathized with others, unlike his siblings. Lily was a daughter of Aphrodite, so she was a bit ditzy, but fun to be around, and also very nice and trusting. Both of them were able to protect themselves just fine, which was unusual for a child of Aphrodite._

_When Dean and Lily heard about the quest, they were both eager to get away from all the war stuff, but nervous about Medusa. Even the legendary hero Perseus had only managed to kill her by decapitating her while she was asleep. But still they agreed to go. They were the best friends ever._

_But they couldn't know that up on Mount Olympus, the Three Fates were happily spinning their socks of fate, one of which was almost completed. They couldn't know that the middle Fate had just cut the last thread. They couldn't possibly know that only one of them would come back battered, but alive, or that one of them would be shredded to death by Medusa's claws, or that the other would be turned to stone, frozen for all of time..._

_Or at least, until a certain son of Poseidon came into play, questing to find and return a stolen bolt of lightning._


End file.
